Trust in public institutions is a valuable form of social capital. The public service needs to be better at promoting integrity, better at embracing transparency, and better at working with its citizens and a growing variety of communities, writes Ken Smith.
An innovative recruitment program for people with autism opened up "life changing" new opportunities for employment and met a business need for accurate record keeping.
Last month, the Centre for Social Impact released the 2020 annual market survey of NDIS providers. The Mandarin has sourced official responses from the two core agencies cited in the survey: The National Disability Insurance Agency, and the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission.
My experiences as a ‘job seeker’ reinforce the view that jobactive should be shut down. Here’s a short account of what happened in the four months I was a job seeker.
Most of us think of ourselves as good people. We set out to be ethical, and we hope that in pivotal moments we will rise to the occasion. But when it comes to building an ethical career, good intentions are insufficient. Maryam Kouchaki and Isaac H. Smith explain.
Economic thinking has clearly played an important role in the prosperity and position Australia enjoys today. For that role to continue into the future, economic thinking needs to respond to the changing nature of our society, the challenges we are now seeing emerge, and deepen the understanding and advice it brings to the policy table.
Many organisations have flexible work policies in place, but see little uptake. Supporting middle management to do the complicated job of translating policy into practice can make a difference.
It may be surprising to learn that AI can be extremely power-hungry. The scale of the problem is difficult to measure, but there have been some attempts to put hard numbers on the environmental cost.
It can be tempting to catch up on work in the evening, but beware the risks. Creating boundaries between work and private life is the key to coping — especially if you regularly work from home.
A social progress index is not a new idea but a UNSW Centre for Social Impact team led by Dr Megan Weier has developed and launched Australia's first quantitative break-down of SPIs at the Australian state and territory level. It was a massive effort resulting in a true snapshot of Australia's social standing on domestic and global benchmarks.
The unprecedented scale of Australia’s most recent bushfire crisis captured the world’s attention. The nation suffered tragic losses of human and animal life — and immeasurable impacts upon the environment and economy. Along with the incredible stories of survival, heroism and community — significant concerns have also been raised about how we deal with such […]
One of most deeply uncomfortable points for both the parliament and the public service in the Australian National Audit Office’s report on the Community Sport Infrastructure grants program is whether then sports minister Bridget McKenzie actually had the legal authority to dish out the grants. Verona Burgess reports.
Proper oversight of national security agencies is not a luxury in a democracy — it is a necessity, writes Senator Jennifer McAllister. And she is introducing a private senator’s bill to see it implemented.
When more than half of Australians have little or no trust in what is supposed to be one of the world's great public services, it's bad for democracy. And it's consistent with the broad decline in levels of trust in government and faith in democracy in Australia over the past three decades, writes Bernard Keane.
Developing and implementing gender equality action plans is not new to the public sector. some of the plans are comprehensive documents which, if fully implemented, will progress gender equality. Other plans are shallow and do not contain meaningful targets. Very few of the plans contain robust performance indicators, and even fewer have the mechanisms to monitor the outcomes.
